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DONALD TRUMP IS NO AXEL FOLEY

Tag: Sally Yates

The President is Always on Defense

What if you started a new job and the first thing the new boss said to you was, “I’m right about everything and you must never disagree with me about anything.” Anyone worth their salt and without a large mortgage payment would flee the building.

We don’t always get to vote on our bosses, but we do vote for our President. Let’s review once again, Hillary Clinton got 65,844,610 votes which was 48.2% of the popular vote, while the man who is President got 62,979,636, only 46.1%. Another fact, there were 7,804,213, or 5.7% of the voters who cast their ballot for someone other than the two headliners.

In real life and according to a May 9, 2017 Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, 46% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 54% disapprove. Doing the math, that means that more than half the people in the USA don’t think Trump is doing a very good job. And in my unscientific poll, there is a large percentage of people in the country who actually hate him.

Most Presidents start out by presenting their case and through their actions they slowly warm up the citizens who might not have voted for them. People aren’t as dumb as Bill Maher claims they are, but there still are massive numbers of people in the country who follow Trump like a cult leader. One of the meanings of cult is a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.

Trump thinks he’s the master of the redirect, which was aptly demonstrated in the movie Beverly Hills Cops II. Gilbert Gottfried played a guy at City Hall in charge of all city records. Eddie Murphy and his cop sidekicks used intimidation to trick the timid clerk. The fun begins when Murphy’s character holds a stack of parking tickets he claims belong to Bernstein’s wife:

Sidney Bernstein setting up bribe says, “Wait, l’ve got an idea. ls there something that I have in this office that I could hand to you and that would make you kind of forget that you’re holding those little pink tickets there?” Gottfried proceeds to propose a $200 bribe to have the tickets go away. The metaphor and sleight of hand helps the police get into the city computer.

And the innocent question, “You’d go, what did l have there? I don’t remember.” Of course, “forgetting” was code for just disremembering that he just gave a large bribe to the cops. What is in one hand, made what was in the other hand go away.

On the one hand, Sally Yates just testified about warning the President about Michael Flynn and the President and all his men did nothing for 18 days. On the other, Trump fired James Comey, Director of the FBI, on May 9, 2017.

On one hand, Jared Kushner’s sister used the image of the President and her brother’s position at the White House to sell EB-5 visas to Chinese investors.

So, for $500,000 anyone without clearance, without vetting can purchase a Green Card and move to the United States. While other workers, future immigrants and refugees seeking asylum have to wait in line. Trump approved this measure a few days before Jared’s sister did her pitch, but on the campaign trail he was so worried about how people get into the country. How is the “Golden Visa” EB-5 program even legal? I guess Trump knows best. I mean, how could a terrorist afford that much money? They can’t just take it out of the ISIS bank, or could they?

On the other hand Trump fired James Comey, the Director of the FBI on May 9, 2017.

As the cable news channel regurgitate diatribes assigned to their political formats, the American public is, once again, fooled by the master liar in the White House. Even Fox News wasn’t quite sure how to handle the firing of James Comey. It was delightful to watch them try to vocalize whether this was good or bad. You can’t keep switching your position on major issues and expect the American people to understand your true values.

The real journalists need to step up right now. They should keep on the Russian story. Why is Donald J. Trump so defensive about this? It sure does feel like Nixon. Remember what really got to the bottom of the whole Watergate mess was a special prosecutor. We’ve already seen the movie, now we just have to read the script.

And they should be taking the press secretary to the wood shed on the EB-5 visa program and how it makes America less secure.

Why not find the answers, or is the Donald afraid that what he has in his one small hand might show that the other small hand has been signing things at the urging of some dark force from a faraway land?

Someone should follow the money. A thorough analysis of everything Trump does would be in order. How will every decision affect his kids and their wealth? The signing of the budget with the extension of the EB-5 just happened; what else has he done? Or maybe it’s nothing, but why not clear the air? What are you afraid of, Mr. President?

Trump’s Enabler White House Counsel

We learned two things yesterday (5-8-2017): the private education that Donald Trump was awarded did not make him a good speller and when confronted with any legal warning or matter, he will stonewall. He learned all his lessons from the late lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn. Some, who know both personalities, would say that Trump is actually channeling Roy.

The Donald is correct, during Sally Yates testimony in front of the Senate Hearing, she did not give us any new facts about what happened. But what she did reveal was a solid timeline that exposes the President’s decision making process when it comes to potential legal threats to his legitimacy.

The acting Attorney General asked for a meeting with the White House Counsel Don McGahn. At two face-to-face meetings, she warned the administration of problems with Michael Flynn. McGahn posed several interesting questions during those encounters.

He wanted to know whether the acting AG had thought Flynn had broken any laws. He also wondered why it was a Department of Justice matter if two administration officials lied to each other. WHAT? And most damaging, he asked if any action they would take would interfere with an on-going investigation. Yates said, “No,” because Flynn had already been interviewed by the FBI.

Clearly McGahn, coincidentally another ‘Donald’, was fishing for answers to whether there was a probe into Flynn. And of course, McGahn is no stranger to the dirty underbelly of Washington politics. Trump may have said he was going to drain the swamp, but kept one of the alligators as legal counsel.

McGahn was Chief Counsel for the RNC for nine years, before George W. Bush appointed him on the Federal Election Committee (FEC), where he had his fingers on how the election process was governed. Don McGahn, as counsel for the RNC, defended Tom DeLay. If you remember, Tom DeLay was indicted and convicted of illegally transferring funds from his campaign to a super PAC in Texas. Rather than get into the lengthy details here which include something about Russian money as well, one might just google: “The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail.”

That doesn’t mean McGahn should be judged by the clients he’s kept, but he did work for the Koch Brothers’ funded Freedom Partners. In short, Don McGahn is apparently more swamp than Trump and thought to be able to navigate around the alligators at the Justice Department.

In Warren Zevon’s classic song, Lawyers, Guns and Money, the one line sticks out, “Send lawyers, guns, and money, the shit has hit the fan!” And for Trump, “it” seems to keep hitting the twirling reality of Washington. And in some cases, the President seems to be picking the stuff up and throwing it back in himself, like an orange orangutan.

It’s too late for Donald Trump to defend his pal Michael Flynn to the press or the people of this great nation. Even the press secretary keeps saying “the President had made the right decision and we’ve moved on,” but have we? We have lawyers, we have more guns in Afghanistan and we have MONEY involved in everything Trump and his relatives touch.

The two Donald’s waited 18 days to pull the plug on what they knew was a problem. That doesn’t sound like the fantasy character Donald Trump created on the campaign trail. And the whole Flynn-gate affair prompts the question, “If there was no Washington Post article, would Flynn still have his job?” If the answer is yes, then the President is guilty of putting personal loyalties above national security. And this demonstrated a lack of political and business judgement. In business, you cut your losses and move on.

There was a great article written by the National Review’s Tom Rogan that was posted on November 20, 2016, that quoted someone who knows Flynn well, “Flynn had a tendency to bully anyone who disagreed with his assessments on operational strategy.” Boy, that sounds a lot like the man who wanted him by his side for all the big decisions on security. The whole premise of Rogan’s article was that Michael Flynn was the wrong pick for National Security Adviser.

I always look for strange connections that don’t mean anything, like the fact that Don McGahn’s mother is Noreen Rogan and the article was written by a man name Rogan, no relation.

Now, I know our President might brew that into a conspiracy theory that someone born in the UK like Rogan shouldn’t be allowed to write about American politics, but if Trump took the time to read this article back when he was deciding who to appoint for National Security, he would have seen what everyone saw in Flynn. A right-winged whack job who has no business being on the people’s payroll. If only our President could read.